Michael Roberts among those seeking more Group 1 talent at Cape Premier Yearling Sale

Michael Roberts was among the familiar figures pounding the rows of stables ahead of the Cape Premier Yearling Sale, with the horse that has taken his training career to another level quickly becoming one of the event’s star graduates.

This select auction, held in association with Tattersalls, is South Africa’s glitziest and is in the second year of being under a new administration which has galvanised the industry in the Western Cape.

Roberts’ colt See It Again, the hot favourite for Saturday’s World Sports Betting Cape Town Met, was bought by agent John Freeman in the darker, pandemic-impacted time of 2021 from Drakenstein Stud and cost R125,000, which translates to just £5,200 or €6,100 in today’s money.

He delivered Roberts, the 11-time South African champion jockey and the 1992 title winner in Britain, a yearned-for Group 1 success from his base just outside Durban, in last year’s Cape Derby and Daily News 2000. Dropping down to a mile, he was a fine second to his exceptional rival, the now retired Charles Dickens, in the L'Ormarins King's Plate three weeks ago.

"My owner Nick Jonsson bought him because he had [dual Durban July winner] Do It Again, and he’s out of a sister," says Roberts. "He also likes Twice Over, he’s had some very good Twice Overs in the past.

"He was just a little horse at the sales, I see most of them at a sale and my comments then were, 'Immature, time'. The owner doesn’t push them, he buys horses with stamina more than sprinting types. I walked past Nick and he said, 'I’ve bought you a nice horse'. 

South African riding legend Michael Roberts has a Group 1 star in See It Again

"He cost nothing really, three bids. After a couple of months, you could see there was something there but we all hope, until they see the racecourse!"

See It Again has had three lead-up races and Roberts seems optimistic that the return to a mile and a quarter should see him in his best light, with the trainer feeling he ran "a little below form" in the King’s Plate, for all that Charles Dickens was a worthy winner.

Living in KwaZulu-Natal, Roberts certainly covets the Durban July, in which his horse was pipped last year, but the country’s premier weight-for-age race would be a mighty accolade for him.

"I’m nervous, yes, because he’s favourite but what can you do?" he says. "Once you give the jockey the leg-up it’s out of your control."

He also hopes that, aged 69, and a winner of the Met from the saddle on Sledgehammer back in 1975, that his second profession provides plenty more highs.

"It’s like as a rider, when I was in England I was doing well but until I won the Eclipse the first time in 1987 [on Mtoto], beating Reference Point, then the whole thing changed around and people think you can ride a Group 1 winner’," he says. "It’s just the same, you need the right people behind you."

There are likely to be many yearlings who cost more than See It Again once the sale begins in the downtown International Convention Centre on Thursday at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm GMT). 

Businessman Greg Bortz and Owen Heffer, the mogul of Hollywoodbets, took over Cape Town’s struggling tracks at Kenilworth and Durbanville in the middle of 2022 and have received widespread praise for uniting stakeholders with a range of financial incentives to owners and stables in order to stimulate the racing economy.

The Cape Racing brand will plough revenue from the sale back into the prize-money pool and Justin Vermaak, its racing operations and bloodstock executive, is hopeful this will be reflected in trade. 

"We were in our infancy in terms of running racing last year, with a lot of ideas, but now a year on, a lot has changed," he says.

"Kenilworth has gone under complete renovation, which has been very well received, and the prize-money has essentially doubled from before we took over. Now with a year behind us, people are buying more into what we’re trying to do and the vibe has just got better and better. 

"We’ve seen it markedly with this sale. It was our inaugural sale last year and we had a very low amount of entries, we were canvassing vendors to try to get the sale to where it was and the quality was something we were looking to improve year on year.

"This time we had 280 entries and we could cut it right down to 130-odd. With that comes an increase in quality. We firmly believe that the quality of horses is a big step up on last year and we’ve got the whole country coming down to buy horses; we’ve had to book more and more rooms for all the trainers and owners from Johannesburg and Durban."

There will be international visitors too. The Hong Kong Jockey Club purchased last year’s top lot, a R3.8 million (£158,000/€185,000) colt by Gimmethegreenlight from Maine Chance Farms, who is midway through his international travels before resale in the Far East.

Second on the leaderboard was the Varsfontein Stud-bred Handsome Prince, knocked down to Amanda Skiffington for R2m on behalf of Fiona Carmichael, whose purple and green silks have been seen at the highest level in Europe from the likes of Ivawood and Intellogent.

The son of Querari won a maiden for Justin Snaith at Kenilworth just after Christmas and is a leading contender for Saturday’s lucrative new sales race, the Cape Slipper.

"He was a very good-looking horse and he wasn’t difficult to find, he was just a lovely individual," says Skiffington.

"[Carmichael] has had some luck over here and she’s involved in Pacaya, who runs in the Met. Let’s just hope Handsome Prince is the real deal. He won nicely over five furlongs, this is six, and he’s drawn 19 of 20 so we’ll have to see."

Amanda Skiffington (right) and Fiona Carmichael (left) have combined for a bright prospect in Handsome PrinceCredit: Sarah Farnsworth

A win for an outside investor such as Carmichael would be welcomed by Vermaak, who has aimed to construct a catalogue with both classic types and those able to provide a quicker return. There are weighty entries from all the country’s top sires, including a filly by Gimmethegreenlight offered by Klawervlei Stud, who is the last into the ring (lot 136) and is a half-sister to champion miler Vardy, while a big name from Maine Chance is from the first crop of Hawwaam (63) and is a half-brother to current horse of the year Princess Calla.

"We created a juvenile series that took three existing two-year-old races and created a journey to start in November and finish in February," says Vermaak.

"The idea was to try to attract vendors to put their more forward, well-grown, precocious horses in this sale. There’s still a market for the more backward horses, but we want people to come to this sale, then next year they come, those horses run and they can buy the next year’s one.

"You can see the sales race linked to this auction from last year; there’s a whole host of Johannesburg-based horses coming down for it. There’s national buying."

There is a valid optimism among organisers that demand, which has been in part driven by lower foal crops at the end of Covid times, will be sustained by the dramatic overhaul of the Cape Town racing scene.

"We were pleasantly surprised with results last year," says Vermaak. "We didn’t think we’d average anywhere near R440,000, and we’re hoping to break the R500,000 mark as demand for horses is really high.

"As the operator, we’ve seen the increase in numbers just within our own area. The year we came in there were only about 250 two-year-olds who had entered the system in the Western Cape alone, and this year we’re sitting on about 450, so it’s almost doubled. The horse population was about 950 here, now it’s up to 1,300, in 14 months. 

"We’ve seen in Australia, where they’re very sharp with their research, they took the view they were going to back prize-money. In the studies you can literally see the graph of yearling prices and prize-money prices just correlates."

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